Paula Gardner: Ann Arbor's news model is changing

The yellowing pages give a snapshot of the biggest story of the day in late June 1994: "Loss of paper, jobs jolts city."

Paula Gardner

And under that headline is a photo of my husband and me, walking into the Ypsilanti Press on the day the paper announced it would close.

Those pages are the first-ever issue of the Ypsilanti Press edition of the Ann Arbor News, the byproduct of the News buying the name and circulation list of the Ypsilanti paper.

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That day's paper landed on my desk a couple of months ago, after a colleague at the Ann Arbor News found it buried in a drawer.

That year seems like a lifetime ago to me now, as I watch the Ann Arbor News announce its own pending finale in July.

Yet so many things are the same.

The changes that I watched in my newsroom in 1994 are occurring across journalism today. Business pressures in the industry weren't created by this year's online trends.

Reactions aren't unique to today, either. They're both personal and professional, from both inside the paper and without: "shocked," as yet another headline read in that paper from a generation ago, an emotion that still feels raw today.

The transitions facing this industry speak of stepping away from the past, and a business that no longer supports its traditional daily print structure. In the newspaper world the changes - in staffing, in content, in publication days - are happening more and more frequently, in Michigan and across the U.S., as the economy batters the institution.

And we've had to wonder when deeper changes would strike Ann Arbor.

This publication is related to the Ann Arbor News in corporate structure and location - we now share its building downtown - and many of us have many friends at the newspaper. We're a niche product, on a different business platform, but watching readership trends and costs just as closely.

We read the News and see the size get smaller and know that the public is weighing the relative value on so many fronts: Time, quantity, quality.

Now, they're weighing the sense of loss.

In my 1994 relic, that was expressed in a simple headline as part of the Press' eulogy: "Citizens sad they didn't support their newspaper."

In Ypsilanti, I learned how the people who didn't read it regularly, who complained about it, who felt like it didn't reflect their own lives or interests still felt a void as it went away.

We're seeing that today as people learn about and react to the Ann Arbor News' pending closure in calls, e-mails and the many, many comments on Web stories.

In 1994, the deepest compliments that I carried with me to my new job - at the Ann Arbor News, where I spent 5 ½ years managing local coverage - came from the readers who said things like, "They did a good job of covering the community."

That was our role. That's what I wanted people to value.

And what I wanted them to miss.

But while readers had to adjust to the loss, they also received a fast introduction to another option: Expanded coverage from the Ann Arbor News.

It's ironic to me that yet another story on that 1994 page introduces Tony Dearing as editor of the debuting Ypsilanti Press edition.

As the Ann Arbor News gives up its 174-year-old print brand, its parent company is taking on a new enterprise: Redefining a community's Web presence not from a print model adapting, but from what a community can want and grow in an online information vehicle.

News will be a driver of that. So will some elements of print, preserving the most viable aspects of a traditional newspaper. Other parts combine as a corporate experiment in online community building.

In Ann Arbor, we believe we're progressive and adaptable, capable of driving meaningful change from so many directions.

We're educated and wired.

And we deserve credible news coverage from local professionals even as the industry turns into "the wild, wild west."

These changes in Ann Arbor will come with pain both internally and in the community. But at this point they also bring hope that a sustainable business model grows in Ann Arbor that supports both the scope for daily news coverage and the professionalism that journalists bring to the job.